PAINTINGS < layers on layers >

I fell in love with oil in college. The translucent quality of the oil medium allows light to pass through the paint, between the suspended pigment particles, and reflect back off the white gessoed painting surface. This light play creates a sumptuous, delicious quality of depth unique to oil paintings. Unfortunately, oil did not love me back - the paint solvents necessary to wield the medium proved too harsh for my system.

In 2017, I started experimenting with acrylics to achieve a similar sense of enamoring depth. In an effort to create minute, transparent space for light to travel through, I began painting in alternating thin layers of acrylic paint color and transparent, acrylic gel medium; kind of similar to the traditional oil technique of glazing. This approach yielded a slow build of contrasting darks and lights, luscious color interplay, and a delightful tension from suspending more opaque marks in their movement. Some of the paintings above contain around 10 alternating layers of acrylic paint color and transparent medium, others encompass dozens. All contain multitudes of mistakes, AHA! moments, and deeper understandings echoed in their marks.